Under 3 hour drive would be nice.
30 minutes drive from the airport is perfect too.
If a student wants to go away to college, then a drive of over three hours might represent a desirable minimum distance.
I donât know if we have an unbreakable limit on distance. Iâm leaving it up to S. Itâs hard to tell if he has a preference.
For me, I would prefer no more than a 5-6 hour drive. Financially, Iâd like to avoid a flight if he receives comparable acceptances/offers. However, if the school is far enough away to require a flight, it doesnât matter if it is a 2-hour flight or a 6-hour flight (he almost applied to one of the UHa schools.)
The sweet spot for me is a 2-4 hour drive. I want him far enough away to at least have to consider being inconvenienced by the trip. But flipping to the other hand (third? fourth?) four of his favorite options are 30-minutes to 90-minutes away.
I have two nieces in school now, both seniors. One is 2 hours away and is home at least twice a month. The other is a 2.5-hour flight away and visits home twice a year. Both are doing fine.
âif the school is far enough away to require a flight, it doesnât matter if it is a 2-hour flight or a 6-hour flightâ
I disagree, coming home for Thanksgiving is a lot easier and cheaper with a 2 hour direct flight than a 6 hour flight. Also you can do an initial drive to take everything for freshman year drop off if itâs a 2 hour flight (~800 miles). Not so easy with a cross country flight.
Youâre right about those points. I should have specified that my main concern is with flying is cost as I have to focus more on budget than time.
Never placed limit. I do not like anything beyond 8 hours door to door , however one might travel. For driving under 4 preferable. Under 2 ideal
Iâm okay if she has to fly, but I would strongly prefer that it be a hub/major airport rather than a regional one. Flights to/from hubs tend to be less expensive, more plentiful, often direct to our home airport (also a hub), and a little less prone to weather issues.
A 2-3 hour drive is perfect for us, and she has some fantastic options within that sweet spot.
Daughter is 1.5 hours away. Itâs awesome. She can come home to go downtown Chicago for the weekend with friends, just to get away once in awhile. We can go visit her at Beloit, do the farmers market, go to lunch and drive back home without boarding the dog!!! Big win.
Then my son is 4-4.5 hours away at Michigan. I have driven there for a noon game and came back the same day
Usually I drive another 45 minutes and see my mother and siblings and stay a day or two.
Both distances work great for us. Both kids can take either Amtrack or buses home, when needed also.
??.
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Any distance thatâs not a 9-10 hour drive. Shorter: you drive. Longer: you fly. 9-10 hours, I am resentful of the airfare cost, and my kid is probably resentful if I make them drive.
I prefer very far away. We raised the kids to be very independent and explore new ideas/geographies/cultures. So, they prefer very far away too. Distance always makes the visits more special too.
My son is 2,031 miles away. Flying out tomorrow for a long weekend visit and cannot wait!
Daughters are 552 miles away. We fly sometimes and we drive (10 hours) sometimes.
My D is applying to schools anywhere from a 3 hour drive to a 6 hour cross country flight. We live within an hour of 2 major airports and all of the schools that she would have to fly to are within an hour of an airport and have somewhat reasonably priced direct flights from at least one of our airports.
Some of the small LACâs though, I am still trying to figure out how she would get from the airport to the school if they donât offer a shuttle. Ubers can get expensive for an hourâs drive. She has a couple that are about a 5-6 hour drive from home. Figure those are also an additional expense as thereâs no way Iâm dropping her off or picking her up without an overnight stay. And they are not near any major airports so driving is the only option. I think once she gets her acceptances/rejections weâll have to start looking more into logistics. My ideal would be an under 4 hour drive or a quick flight with a train or shuttle option to the school.
My neighbor is a freshman at a school about 1/2 hour from home. It is a major university with lots of geographical diversity. However, even though he loves the school and has made friends, heâs been home at least 4-5 times already and parents have visited multiple times to âdrop stuff offâ as well as for parents weekend. I know I will desperately miss my D but I want her somewhere she will be forced to stay and try to find her people.
I started a thread like this when we were searching for DDâ19. We looked at some that were an obnoxious drive (4-7 hours) that we didnât really want her doing alone. We looked at one that was flying distance, but our airport and their airport were not major hubs, so there were only a couple of flights a day and a three hour layover. It was really good we visited because though she thought she wanted far away, actually doing it and realizing she would be dropped off to stay until Christmas made her decide sheâd rather be closer. Another would have been a nonstop flight for her, but then a 2 hour bus ride. Doable but not great. We decided why have this hassle to deal with when we donât have to.
DDâ19 ended up 1.75 hours drive away. Itâs easy to move her in/out. Easy for us to take Grandma and friends down for her first theatre production- in fact she had family and friends at almost every performance of it which was nice. And there will be many more weâll want to see. Easy for her to drive home for events or just because (and thatâs fine). Easy for her boyfriend to run down to see her. She is very social and she loves being able to live among her friends there but still stay in close contact with people back home. Sheâs having no trouble being involved and making connections there even though she comes home some weekends. Itâs also the perfect school for her, it met her list like no other, so itâs not like we compromised her wants to keep her close. We just got lucky.
DDâ17 went to cc one hour away and I can tell you she didnât have to live far away to be VERY independent. Ever since she moved to college, she has done all of her cooking, worked and paid for all rent, arranged for housing after graduation, dog-sat at strangersâ houses, obtained work in her field, free-lanced, and gotten used to city life and driving which is definitely different from home 
My kids wanted to be far enough away that we wouldnât be tempted to visit them. We wanted them far enough away that they wouldnât come home every weekend. They ended up 500 miles from home.
I went to school in my hometown a mile away from my parents, only visited them once every 3-4 weeks.
I know one parent who spent the first five weeks of fall semester with her daughter, until sorority rush was over. The school is 300 miles from home. Her daughter finally told her to leave after friends starting making fun of the mother.
I think it depends on the child, and the parents.
I am a community college student who moved 2 ish hours away from home. This is not a very far drive for most but I am a homebody so would prefer to be closer to home, about an hour. It is all up to personal opinions and how often you plan on going home. I go home a lot so the 2 hour drive can get tedious but is no problem for most people! I plan on applying to nc state which is about 30 minutes from home
Ideally, we were looking for something within 5-6 hours. Based on the best school for what she wanted to do, we ended up at 7. If the perfect school had been further, we probably would have dealt with it. Quality of education would trump ease of 5-6 trips per year.
I donât think that being too close would have been a concern. If Pitt or CMU had been the right choice, that would have been fine.
Good luck to you! I admire your choice of community college â 4 year college.
Was more worried about fit but ideally a dayâs drive is the limit. Oldest D is at In-state school about 1.5 hour drive away. Younger one is going to go OOS and that is a 7.5 hour drive. For what itâs worth, when I was in school I was a 10 hour drive from home. I flew once, after that I would drive it. For my younger D, Iâll look at flying her some times otherwise it will be driving.
Regardless of actual distance (full disclosure S is 3 states away - 11 hour car ride or 2 hour flight + 2 hr car rride) , I like knowing heâs âawayâ at school. D will likely be further. Donât get me wrong, we love having both here but think kids should go away for school. That could actually be close by provided they act âawayâ. We know so many local families who have kids who come home quite frequently from state U. Canât understand it. Why arenât they at football games, tailgates, all the other activities that go on all the time?
Lot of personal growth comes from staying away. Learning how to navigate life on your own, cook, clean, shop, make decisions, etc. Plus itâs got to be way more fun! I know it was for me.
One of our kids goes to school 10 min away, (we live in a university town). He comes home to do his laundry and borrow a car. The other is 14 hr plane ride. We see him once or twice a year. But ideally, within a 3 hr driving distance.
Revisiting this thread now that a lot of college admissions decisions have rolled in. Iâm having difficulty with cost projections when comparing OOS schools which require a flight versus the options that are a 4-hr or less drive.
So many unknowns. Iâm definitely leaning towards a preference for schools which do not require flights for a number of reasons.